Author's Notes: Those
of you who've read my previous blogs on politics know that I live in New York and
have a closer look at certain members of the so-called Justice Democrats. I
have in previous articles expressed my own strong negative opinions of them.
I will do my best in
this article to remain as impartial as possible and try to let the facts speak
for themselves. If I let any personal bias in I apologize.
As we enter the 2026 midterms the Justice
Democrats, which counts among its members AOC, Ilhan Ohmar and the rest of 'The
Squad' is putting forth its biggest slate of candidates since their initial run
in 2018. According to their website they are endorses eleven newcomers and one
former representative.
In theory this represents an immense step forward
for the movement, certainly compared to the last cycle when two members of
their caucus Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush were defeated in Democratic primaries
even before the general election. But in another sense there's an argument that
the movement that the Squad represents has officially peaked and that it may
very well be all downhill from here.
2026 marks the fifth election cycle that the
Justice Democrats have officially run candidates. And since we are now nearly a
full decade since the movement was launched I believe enough time has passed to
clear headedly illustrate what they have accomplished – and far more often,
their limitations. So here are some basic facts that a historian or a political
scholar can impartially realize.
Fact: The Justice Democrats are not a
political movement in the commonly accepted use of the term.
In the history of Congress 'movements' have broad
definitions but they usually involve an influx of new members of both Houses of
Congress, governor's races and state houses. They involve either new political
parties or in many cases fall under the wave of a President. Some of the most successful
include the launch of the Republican Party at the eve of the Civil War, the
Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s, the Progressive era at the start of
the 20th century and the influx of New Deal Democrats starting with FDR's
landslide election in 1932. There have also been successful Congressional
movements such as the so-called Class of 1974 in which 87 people who ran for
Congress for the first time were elected, the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 and
most recently the Tea Party movement of 2010.
Based on pure statistics the Justice Democrats are
a failure as a movement. The original founders of it Kyle Kulinski and Cenk
Uygur classified as such after the 2018 midterms. As I've said before and will
say again they put forth a slate of 78 candidates for governor, Lieutenant
Governor, Senate and Congress in that year and only four candidates who ran
under that banner – Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Taib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez – won that year. They have
never even tried to run a field anywhere near that big in the 2020s and they've
only tried to run for offices in Congress. They haven't endorsed a candidate
for Governor or Lieutenant governor since their inaugural run; the last time
they tried to run a candidate for Senate was Betsy Sweet in Maine and she only got
22 percent of the vote in a Democratic primary.
Many of the people who endorse their agenda had
already been incumbents in safely Democratic districts for years, most notably
Ro Khanna. All of the Justice Democrats to this point have been in some of the
bluest districts in the country; even in this most recent run, none of them are
running in red or even swing districts. After five cycles the Justice Democrats
seem at least somewhat aware of their limitations.
And its telling that nearly eight years of
serving in Congress there has been no sign of a 'Squad Effect' in the Justice
Democrats or any other part of state or local politics. Considering that AOC
and her ilk are the most visible representatives in terms of social media and
actual media one would have expected that there might have been a sign of women
of color or indeed progressives of any sort being more than willing to sign up
to run for elected office around the country. Yet halfway through the decade
they were only able to come up with eleven new candidates to run this time out.
And as you'll see we're already seeing the limitations.
Fact: The Justice Democrats are increasingly
having to use the same candidates to run for elected office over and over.
I don't want to pick on Cori Bush, I've done that
a lot, but she represents by far the best case.
In 2018 she ran for the Missouri 1st
district and was trounced in the primary only get 36. 9 percent of the vote. In
2020 she managed to narrowly win the primary for that district and immediately
became both a new member of the squad and one of the biggest anchors. This is
what I wrote about her two years ago:
In
November 2021 Bush, along with Bowman,
was one of six House Democrats to break with their party and vote
against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act because it was not
accompanied by the Build Back Better Act. As I mentioned before the main reason
for this argument was because Biden had committed the cardinal sin of
‘compromising’ with Joe Manchin. Progressives as we know are the only people
who think half a loaf is worse than nothing which is the only logic followed by
which Bell and Bowman voted against the bill.
Yet
even that paled to what by then had become a glaring hypocrisy in regard to
Bush’s own background. For her career as an activist Bush had been one of the
biggest advocates for the ‘defund the police’ movement. But by August of her
first year in Congress she was already spending tens of thousands of dollars on
personal security for herself. When she was challenged by this on August 5th,
her reaction was simple – and mind-boggling: “I get to be here to do the work,
so suck it up – and defunding the police has to happen.” By 2021 calls to defund the police had become
unpopular and some cities who shifted funding away from law enforcement
reversed course. Bush stuck with her position, despite the challenges to public
safety in her district and a federal investigation into the money she was
spending on private security – that her husband was providing.
All
of this just led to the perfect storm that began after October 7th.
Like Bowman, the Jewish community locally had viewed her with skepticism along
with her associations with people with anti-Semitic views. But rather than
engage with Jewish community leaders, Bush ignored them, meeting with them only
once after four years in office. Numerous organizations made requests for her
time and Bush’s response was glib “my
trick to dealing with groups with whom (I) disagree is to simply ignore their
calls.” Even after Bell emerged as a challenger against her, Bush continued to
double down on her rhetoric, equating the Middle East to her own actions as an
activist.
Political
talent, as a Missouri columnist wrote in the aftermath of Bush’s defeat last
night is rooted in dexterity: “to appeal to a wide variety of constituencies
without significant internal contradictions…Candidates with dexterity are not
only able to expand their base, but in some cases can neutralize or even
convert key individuals and groups who once constituted significant
obstacles…It doesn’t mean you lack convictions…it means you have the ability to
frame those convictions in different settings, to emphasize certain issues in
certain venues; to adopt a demeanor suitable for the group, yet without seeming
like a chameleon.”
Bush
spent much of the days leading up to the campaign insisted that her opponent
was trying to buy her seat, insisting that if voters were still in line when
the polls were closed to stay in line. Bowman was one of those who made
fundraising calls for her referring to her as a ‘powerful truth teller’.
There
were no signs in Bush’s ‘concession speech’ that she was humbled by her loss.
“One thing I don’t do is go away,” she said…
Why
is this relevant? Bush is running to reclaim her old seat yet again. But this time
her opponent has her entire previous tenure in Congress to use as opposition
research against her before she even gets started.
But
this has been a pattern of the Justice Democrats since the start. They can't find a lot of people who are
willing to run based on the platform that is so far left most people can't
stand on it, much less get elected on it or survive against the restrictions of
campaign finance laws that their opponents, Democrats or Republicans are more
than willing to break. And not enough people are willing to do the definition
of insanity: keep doing the exact same thing and believe it will work.
Kara
Eastman tried twice in Nebraska in 2018 and 2020 and after losing both times
surrendered. Marie Newman managed to win her primary for the Illinois 3rd
but after she got flattened when she was running for reelection left the scene.
Jessica Cisneros got beaten in the Texas 28th in 2020, made it to
the runoff in 2022 but lost as well. She hasn't been back since. This is not a
vote of confidence when it comes to getting candidates to run for office.
And
that's brings us to another problem:
Fact:
The only districts the Justice Democrats have a chance in are the most
progressive in the country..
The expansion
this time around involves more of the same: two new candidates in deep blue
California districts, two more candidates in Illinois, another candidate in
Michigan, New York and one more in Texas. They know their platform is a non-starter
in Idaho or Alaska and it's not even that popular in Florida or New Jersey.
At
this juncture the Justice Democrats are going back to the fallback position
that every political group tries at some point: that's it time for a new
generation of candidates. This has been going on since democracies were started
across the globe and in some cases it will be a success. But we all know it
works just as well for conservatives and Republicans as it does for progressives
and Democrats.
This
is a sell every candidate for office tries and it doesn't always work. We saw
it tried this past Tuesday in the North Carolina primary in the fourth
district. Nida Allam tried to run against Valerie Foushee this past week on an
anti-Ice platform, was endorsed by Bernie Sandrs, gun control activists and the
working families party. She lost by a small margin though she didn't concede
until Wednesday.
This
wasn't the first time Allam challenged Foushee, She'd done so in 2022 and lost
by nearly ten points to her. That time she didn't have the Justice Democrats on
her side; this time she had the entire left-wing establishment – and it still
wasn't enough for her to win.
Frederick
Haynes III took the Justice Democrats endorsement when he ran in the Texas primary
but this was already a safe seat. Jasmine Crockett had vacated it when she decided
to run in the Democratic Senate primary that was held this past year. Hayness
is 66 years old, hardly the best model for the kind of generational shift the
Justice Democrats want to argue for and its likely they might not be able to
find someone who could fit that niche on short notice.
Crockett,
I should be clear, was never a Justice Democrat. She took money from SuperPACs
that were aligned with cryptocurrency industry, such as one led by the now
convicted Sam Bankman-Fried. She was just as loud and vehement as any of them
and if anything was less liked by her colleagues than some of the
members of the Squad. When she ran for ranking member of the Committee on
Oversight and Government reform, she placed last in the Democratic vote. She
was part of the Congressional Progressive caucus (of which every one of the
Squad is a member of) but not the Justice Democrats.
I
mention Crockett because she represents the other side of the progressive coin:
those who are willing to use immense and often dark money to win elections and
advance their agenda. It worked as well for her running for the nomination for
the Senate in Texas as it has done for every Justice Democrat who tried to run
for Senate: she might have gotten a bigger share of the vote than Paula Jean
Swearengin did in either of her runs for the Senate in West Virginia but it
still ended in the same place: defeat and the end (at least for now) of her
political life.
How
the Justice Democrats will do with the remainder of their challengers this year
remains to be seen. They are still playing by their own set of rules and they
are angry when the rest of the country doesn't follow them. And that brings me
to their biggest problem:
Fact:
The Democratic Party, in its efforts to retake the House, has more or less been
rejecting their platform when it comes to vetting new Congressional candidates.
In
an article in The New York Times last months we learned that Ken Martin and the
DNC were engaging in what is the biggest attempt to widen the national party's
base in America since the successful 50 state strategy of Howard Dean in 2006
and 2008. Unlike the Justice Democrats they are making attempts to win not just
swing districts but also districts that are fairly red. They are aware they probably
won't win all of them but the goal is to force the RNC to spend money in districts
that the GOP has long considered safe.
They
have been making efforts to recruit Democrats across the country, not just in
traditional safe spaces but also in red states like Montana and Tennessee. And
as part of the vetting strategy for each candidate they are making sure there
is no record in their social media of the kind of activist statements that are
the bread and butter of the Justice Democrats such as 'EAT THE RICH' and
'DEFUND THE POLICE'.
We've
also seen the national party attempt to recruit more or less Blue Dog democrats
to win in states they haven't tried in a while, such as Mary Peltola's
challenge of Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Alex Vindman challenging Ashley Moody in
Florida and getting Sherrod Brown to try and win the seat that was formerly
held by JD Vance in Ohio. How many of these races will be successful is an open
question but considering that they are all trying to run for national office in
red states - where the progressive
ideology has no roots as of yet - would
also seem to indicate that they are more interesting in winning than they are ideological
purity that the Justice Democrats have been focused on to their detriment.
Combined
with Martin's decision to push out David Hogg as one of the vice chairs of the
DNC after he refused to say he would not primary incumbent Democrats this would
appear to indicate the Democrat's flirtation with progressive candidates as
their drawing card, which became their selling point after the 2018 midterms, has
become less important then taking back power. Considering that this has always
been at odds with the left-wing, who has made it clear they prefer losing in a
noble cause then winning and compromising, this can only be seen as a step in
the right direction both for the party and perhaps the country in a post-Trump
era.
Now
if you believe thoroughly in the activist cause of the left – and I'm fully aware
there are enough true believers on this site who think that AOC and Bernie are
too conservative for their tastes – this will only disappoint and enrage
you. If, however, like me you actually want to realize some of their policies
into existence and you think the Squad and their followers have been given more
than enough time to succeed at their all-or-nothing approach, this can only
come as a relief.
At
the end of this election cycle the Justice Democrats will have been given a full
decade to realize their agenda. Considering their own founders drew the
conclusion they failed eight years ago, I'd say that we're well past them
coming to terms with it. I've spent far too much time with the dreamers of the
left. Its time to get back to the pragmatism of reality.
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